Additonally, I'm going to move this thread from the FileMaker Community Feedback Space (which is specifically for input on the Community itself) to the Discussions Space where you should receive more views and potentially more feedback on this topic!

Your situation depends on how time is being entered. First, a time entry should be related to a specific Client ID. Second, the time has to be numerical to be added. Third, time can be entered in "time" format (hh:mm, e.g., 05:35) or in decimal format (hh.hh, e.g., 1.25 hours). Decimal format is typical in professional billing in 15-minute increments. Fourth, is total time for a single entry being computed from a "start" time and "finish" time or is just total time being entered for that single entry?

The general formula is:

"Time" format:

Convert minutes to numbers

Convert hours to numbers

Add minutes

Add hours

Divide total minutes by 60

Remainder is total minutes

"Carry" whole quotient to total hours

Example: 4 hours, 277 minutes

277 minutes divided by 60 = 4 hours 37 minutes

Add 4 hours to 4 hours

Total time: 8 hours 37 minutes

Decimal format:

Add decimal times as numbers

If you need to compute time elapsed between "start" and "finish" times ("time" format):

In order to compute elapsed time, you need only do this unless "start" and "Stop" might be on the opposite sides of 12 midnight:

Stop - Start

This produces elapsed time in seconds and if you choose a time result type, you can format the result in HH:MM:SS format if desired.

To get that as a number in hours:

(Stop - Start ) / 3600

If Start and Stop might start in one day and stop in another, use timestamp fields and then the above calculation will work even in that case, but now you have to specify a date as well since such a format could compute elapsed time spanning multiple days.

I manually enter these times and a decimal basis. There is no outside time management system. My goal is to create a query action similar to our "Time Lookup" (where I can summarize specific individual's time) to one where when I select a JOB NAME I would be able to select a job and that job's TOTAL HOURS over the 17000 plus time sheets would be added together and summarized.